Basebrawl

Angry dads flail uselessly at one another for a while at a little league game in Georgia, earning themselves citations for disorderly conduct.

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The Snowden Principle

Antinous / Moderator

For a moment, I thought the whole thing was going to get the Paula Deen treatment.

I like how the women, who are the tiniest people there, wade right in and start barking orders at the huge men.

Moderator note: I’m just taking out all the fat jokes, so don’t even bother.
- MB44
  
  They will wish they would have listened if the person that runs their house resembles mine.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    It needs David Attenborough narrating.
- TheMudshark
  
  I´m just going to youtube then. Ha!
  - TheMudshark
    
    Ok, alright, I´m back. Enough youtube comments for the day, that stuff is exhausting.
Ryan_T_H

The jokes are easy. But the desperate cries of the kids pleading for their dads to stop it is just too sad.
- EH
  
  You’re never too young to have a story to tell.
jimh

Show sum CLAAASSSSS!
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  Which class does she want them to show? I think they’ve got their chosen class appropriately displayed.
  
  What does she want, that they should stand back and each order their manservant into the fray on their behalf?
  
  It’d make for a better video.
Andrei M

My first thought is “What a couple of dumbasses.” My second thought, noticing this is in Georgia, is “To what extent are racial issues factoring into what’s going on?” But it could also just be a couple of regular ol’ dumbasses, of course.
- Preston Sturges
  
  I think that gene pool could use a little more diversity.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Exactly, notice the black/white grappling at the beginning.
  
  Anyway, respect to the people screaming out for restraint and decency.
- millie fink
  
  My second thought, noticing this is in Georgia, is “To what extent are racial issues factoring into what’s going on?”
  
  Why? Not to defend The Great White South or anything, but racism is rife in the Northern U.S. too. IIRC correctly, all the top ten most segregated cities are there, for example.
  - IronEdithKidd
    
    You are correct. Racism is a national problem.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1432354196 Andy Adams
    
    I always heard it expressed as whites in the south don’t mind black people too close as long as they don’t get too big and white people in the north don’t mind black people too big as long as they don’t get too close.
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  The two initial combatants (in the available video anyway) are the two big bald white dudes, blue shirt and grey shirt. It seems to me like everyone else was involved in pulling them apart and restraining, and that then there were people pulling apart the people separating the combatants, and attempting to restrain them too.
  
  The only 2 black guys I see seem to have been attempting to help and got caught up in the confusion, in fact I’d say that that everyone but grey shirt and blue shirt were confused helpers.
  
  And it may be that blue shirt is a police man, because grey shirt and possibly grey shirt’s wife are being arrested for assaulting a police officer at the end. Sucks to be them.
http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Mari Lwyd

There is something deeply hideous about the footage(not the people but the image quality). It slides oddly and geometry feels wrong. It’s the visual equivalent of nails on chalkboard.
- pahool
  
  yeah, that youtube image stabilization doohickey makes me feel…unstable.
  - http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Mari Lwyd
    
    I started physically squirming.
  - nixiebunny
    
    Is that what’s going on? There is a really weird effect in a YT video my brother posted of his truck’s dashboard while driving down a bumpy driveway, where the tachometer was bobbling around like it was possessed by Satan.
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jizxXzkXGKY
    
    These computer geeks just can’t leave well enough alone.
    - http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Mari Lwyd
      
      I really enjoyed this effect when Dali used it in The Persistence of Memory but the video make’s me feel like Munch’s The Scream.
      - TheMudshark
        
        It kind of fits the content though, gives it an appropriately surreal touch.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness
    
    Not as unstable as image stabilization made me feel the few times I’ve seen it in amateur porn.
http://www.jeremiahblatz.com/ Jeremiah Blatz

To be fair, one of them appears to be using some semi-legitimate submission grappling (around 30 seconds one of the guys attempts some sort of arm triangle-ish thing). But, yeah…
- Drabula
  
  Yep. Somebody’s been watching too much MMA.
  - wrybread
    
    I agree with you that he’s been watching MMA, but I don’t think he has actual grappling training. I don’t think he’s going for the arm triangle, he’s in the total wrong position for it, and he can obviously take mount or the back, but doesn’t, at least in the flash we see here. I think he’s just squeezing the guy for dear life, at least enough so that he can tell the boys later about the great submission he was attempting.
    
    And christ why are all those people so damn fat? I was in the burbs of Atlanta for work recently and as a vegetarian I almost couldn’t eat at any restaurants, there’s much frickin bbq there. I guess these guys are the fruit of all that.
    - millie fink
      
      Indeed.
      
      BBQ Fruit.
      - http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
        
        BBQ Fruits. BBQ Fruits. Marching off to nowhere in our BBQ Fruits…
    - IronEdithKidd
      
      I learned yesterday from the police recruitment video thread that the City of Dekatur has a lot of Indian restaurants. In order to eat with confidence, it’s probably worth the trip.
    - http://www.jeremiahblatz.com/ Jeremiah Blatz
      
      Actually taking mount or the back from that crappy guard-on-the-side position is incredibly difficult. But, yeah, I was probably being overly generous :-)
      - wrybread
        
        Agreed, but he could have used the foot hooked on the guy’s hip to pull himself up to mount, or just roll the guy on top of him for back mount. But yeah, agreed, a really weird position.
        
        And plus those guys are so fat they were probably all gassed 5 seconds into it anyway.
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  At the end of the video one of the two being arrested responds to the inaudible remark of an officer that “he didn’t say he was a policeman” or something to that effect.
  
  Since the arresting officers are uniformed and armed, it seems to imply that at least one combatant was a police officer, and that those persons were being arrested for assaulting same.
  
  There is a strong possibility of extreme injustice in this situation.
  - zombiebob
    
    oh cmon, certainly not one single police officer would abuse their position thus!
    - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
      
      Yer right, I wasn’t thinking straight, probably just had them taken into custody to talk it out over coffee duh ;)
  - http://jimbeach.net mindfu
    
    Could be. On the other hand, it is funny to consider the person meaning:
    
    “Well, OF COURSE I wouldn’t have punched a complete stranger if I knew he was a police officer. That’s just wrong! I thought I was just putting my fist into the face of ordinary citizen!”
    - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
      
      LoL, yeah it’s impossibles to tell anything from that video cept 2 going for assaulting an officer.
      
      But that’s what is indicative of a possible abuse to me, since belligerents are often mutually combative and Georgia has a clear “fighting words” law that even has a clause particular to references to kids. Assault is usually a misdemeanor where assaulting a copper is usually a felony.
      
      Probably get plead away/down or dismissed, but it’d still be wrong to charge that or scare them by threatening the charge. Such is life, sucks to be them.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      That’s a rather common excuse from criminals. “Well, I didn’t know that there was a hidden camera!” Like that excuses the crime.
Scott Brooks

I’m sorry, I thought this was America!
- http://www.openbuddha.com/ Al Billings
  
  So they should have been using crowbars?
- Preston Sturges
  
  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/South_Park/Season_9
  
  Batdad knows no fear! Batdad knows no pain!
- ffabian
  
  Yeah I’m disappointed too. Where are the guns? Why is nobody shooting?
Daemonworks

Fighting over a kid’s sporting event? You fail at society, go live in a cave for the rest of your life.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  Eh. I don’t know any of the people involved, but I’d bet that some of the participants are stressed / angry / unhappy, for reasons unrelated to the game. I expect that Little League is just where it came out
  - HarveyBoing
    
    (I love how the “Post as…” button doesn’t work until I’ve typed something, but when I click it after I type something, it discards what I typed and makes me start over).
    
    Anyway, I’m convinced that most of the run-of-the-mill, day-to-day conflicts that occur in society, such as road rage and Little League blow-ups (Georgia’s not close to being the only place this kind of stuff happens) would just go away if everyone would get enough sleep and stop eating so much junk food.
    
    Speaking of “reasons unrelated to the game”.
  - wrybread
    
    I think the problem is that Americans don’t play their own national sport. What’s up with adults not playing real baseball? Maybe this is just an expression of their overwhelming desire to participate in some way…
    - penguinchris
      
      There are adult leagues set up essentially the same as little league, typically less formal but formal enough, for most sports.
      
      The problem is that a lot of the BS shown in this video – people taking things way too seriously – is rampant in those leagues, which drives away most reasonable people who it might be fun to play with.
      - wrybread
        
        Really? I’ve never ever seen an adult baseball league. Definitely seen lots of softball, but never baseball.
        
        Not saying they don’t exist, and not disagreeing with your general point, but I still think its weird that so few American adults play what’s often called their “national pastime”.
        
        At least soccer fans actually *play* soccer into adulthood.
      - penguinchris
        
        @boingboing-60c530d611f7017ba51093527ac1ee3d:disqus Heh… I don’t actually know, but I assume that for most people who want to play baseball softball is good enough?
        
        I know there are amateur adult hockey and football (american) leagues, and I bet there are even soccer leagues in the US too.
        
        To be honest I don’t really know what the difference is between baseball and softball other than the pitching style and size of the ball. I assume the easier and safer softball way of things is ideal for an adult league.
        
        I do, though, agree that it’s weird that so few people play our national pastime. I don’t think it’s really been the national pastime since, like, the 40′s, when most people started caring about football instead.
      - wrybread
        
        I stubbornly don’t consider softball baseball. Some watered down version of it that lacks a good portion of the strategy and most of the skill maybe, but in my mind its kind of like calling Horse basketball.
        
        I dunno, maybe fast pitch baseball is just too dangerous for adults who aren’t super good at it? Maybe the pitcher would get sued too often…
      - penguinchris
        
        @boingboing-60c530d611f7017ba51093527ac1ee3d:disqus I guess you’re probably right about baseball/softball. I would bet that amateur leagues have rules that are sort of a cross between the two, but of course I am just speculating based on no actual knowledge :)
        
        By the way I know what you mean about empty patches of dirt having people playing soccer every day, I noticed that in Europe when I was there (and you see it in movies and such too). I think the main difference is that Americans are averse to “just for fun” physical activity in general :)
http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore

The highlight for me: the guy in the “Rivers of Life” Christian T-shirt standing there shrugging and doing absolutely nothing to help.
- BurntHombre
  
  Why was that the highlight for you? You think he should have joined in with the other dozen guys trying to pull the fighters apart? And this somehow has something to do with his t-shirt and religious affiliation?
  - http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore
    
    As a matter of fact, yes, I do think that people espousing Biblical Christianity should not sit idly by and commit Kitty Genovese Syndrome when people might be getting hurt. YMMV, I guess…?
http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

I’d buy that for a dollar!
nixiebunny

Little League is where kids learn how to deal with their insane parents in social situations.
FusionEnvy

At some point I will leave this sad excuse for a society and live like an animal with pride.
- http://twitter.com/timmymac Tim McIntire
  
  Good points. I was going to post something shitty about the South until I remembered I’m in Massachusetts where hockey dads actually kill each other.
big ryan

yeah stuff like this happens all over the world where people are not as southern, not as fat, not as baseball

the real story here is the crazy camera work, it makes me feel like im watching some kind of nightmare
- FancyMonocle
  
  I’m surprised more people haven’t commented on that. What ever they’re shooting on is making the video look bizarre.
  - http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot
    
    It’s YouTube’s new stabilization feature — it gives you the option now when you upload a video.
- zombiebob
  
  you are, the nightmare that used to be the american dream.
  - big ryan
    
    cool, im going to have that printed on business cards
    
    Big Ryan
    “I am the nightmare that used to be the american dream”
snipehunt

And THATS how you teach GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP!
bo1n6bo1n6

I thought it was a little Ken Burns documentary with all the weird zoom/pan craziness.
Rephlex

I had a friend that possessed a plethora of character flaws, but the one thing he did seem to excel in… was fighting. Growing up he attended every Martial Arts school he could find, typically taking advantage of the “First month is free” deal then moving on to the next school, as he had no money and came from a broken home. By the time he reached his late 20s, he was a honed weapon, feared by even friends and motivated by spite and hatred. Despite being a horrible person really, he was a natural when it came physical conflict. Even seeking it out as he got older.

Once he had kids, he introduced them to the neighborhood baseball scene. This was in Chicago, the city, located in an deeply rooted Latino nehighborhood in the midst of an identity battle with the recent surge of Yuppie-centric gentrification. His kid’s team was comprised of just that, children and families that came from 3rd generation Mexican households teamed against lavishly gated communities that out of the back of their Range Rovers prepped their kids for games in perfect, unstained, little-league uniforms.

The first fight I saw was over an umpires dramatic bad call and in an instant the stands emptied, with my friend at the spearhead. There he was, preying on fathers desperately trying to balance protecting their children while attempting to assert themselves physically, against the blind rage of their combatants at the same time. He was a blur of movement, almost dancing on his victims, each going down among a concert of yelling from onlookers.

After that first brawl, it was no longer about instilling childhood memories of America’s greatest pasttime, but instead attending an unspoken invitation of war with an apposing ethnic-based faction. Every game had a fight and each time that neighborhood field drifted further away from its intended purpose.

I will never forget the look on my friend’s face during that first brawl, it was contorted with glee, knocking a fathers two front teeth so loose on the dugout that they dangled in his mouth. My friend’s right fist cocked back ready to deal the next blow, exclaiming beforehand, “Hey Flappy, Im gonna hurt you…”. It was the purist embodiment of true hatred and racially defined blame I have ever seen. It was sickening and it went on for 5 straight games until finally the league was disbanded.

Such is America.
- pKp
  
  Wow, that’s a great/horrific story. What happened to your friend after that ? Is he still alive ?
noah django

(*・_・)ノ⌒*

Also, today in GA; at a karaoke bar, racially mixed patrons sang and rapped together, then high-fived each other. Nobody was overweight and we all had fun.

In the rural areas of YOUR state, fat rednecks beat each other up. Yes, your state too. This is a fact. As you were.
- Enkinan
  
  ^This^ I swear I can’t go a week without some rural ding dong making Georgia look like a bunch of idiots in the news.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Yup. My own white-trash trailer-park upbringing was in blue-state Southern California. Kids with 2-day-old Kool-Aid mustaches, rusty Camaros on cinderblocks, pool cues and gunfire and dead skunks, the works. Mine was the trailer park in Lakeside that Country Dick Montana sings about right here.
    
    My Name is Earl was based in “Camden County,” but they never said which state. Could have been Maryland, near where creator Greg Garcia grew up, but it was shot in the San Fernando Valley and sure looked like my hometown, right down to the characters and the elderly one-eyed postman.
    
    Rednecks, like roaches, thrive everywhere.
http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity

Kids’ sports would be so much more fun if the parents just stayed the hell home…
Joshua Hutchinson

Come on, now. This doesn’t mean society has broken down and we all should move to caves. People do get angry sometimes. People do get into fights. But how many thousands of Little League games happened on the SAME DAY and no one fought?

I’ve coached my son’s team for four years now and the harshest thing I’ve heard/seen in that time is one parent yelling to another parent, “Quit being a dumbass!”
snagglepuss

I’m pretty proud of my daughter, but one of the proudest moments came when she, 9 years old and the star of her slow-pitch team, quit the team – Because the new coach held a meeting on the field and was calmly instructing all of the girls on various ways to cheat, how get away with it and, most of all, how to rationalize it by calling in “gamesmanship”.

A year earlier, my daughter had the baseball chops to pull off an unassisted triple play, and she loved the game – But I’d always told her that it was a sport, not combat, that it was about building character, co-operation and self-respect, and the minute it stopped being fun or felt wrong, she had my permission to give it up. She soon witnessed a scene where a park-district umpire not only was making outrageously preferential calls for the other team, but had the gall to come up to our team van as we were loading up the gear and gloat that her niece was on the other team, and what were we gonna do about it.

(Unfortunately for the ump, I knew somebody on the park district board. The ump was fired a few days later. Small justice, I suppose, but the bitch had it coming.)

Anyway. my daughter was also growing uncomfortable with coaches from other teams trying to poach her (Remember, these were 9 and 10 year-olds, and the sharks were already circling), but when an alleged adult starting telling her to cheat to win, and that if she wouldn’t they would, she called it a day and never looked back.

She’s doing fine now, a biochem grad, and about to have our first grandchild. Her team went on to finish dead last, but a few of the players went on to become local girl’s baseball legends – As the dirtiest, most ruthless competitors, and the meanest off-field drunks.

American sports. Winning is EVERYTHING.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid
  
  Well, obviously your daughter was just a communist misfit with bad values. There’s still time to make sure your grandchild doesn’t inherit such a strange attitude toward American institutions.
  
  Harumph!:)
- IronEdithKidd
  
  You win at parenting! It’s so rare anymore. Thank you for raising an adult rather than a child. And congrats on the future grandkid.
- zombiebob
  
  awesome that the ump got fired
100_billion_planets

Seems like a case for the Decatur police department. This situation calls for immediate higher standards enforcement!
Paul Renault

I would have written that summary as: “Useless dads flail angrily at one another…”
Over the River

The video shows up in fairly good quality, even when played at a lower resolution; but there is a slight slow-motion feel to it. Being that fighting is the subject, I though I was watching a Sam Peckinpah* or (Arthur Penn – Bonnie and Clyde – shooting scene) directed film. Very interesting. Wonder if the director of this film was going for that look and feel. {Play it without the sound to get a better feel for this.}

* [Peckinpah's] signature combination of slow-motion, fast editing, and the deliberate distension of time has become the standard depiction of violence and action in post-Peckinpavian cinema.
zombiebob

With the fence separating the fighters from the non, it almost seems as if we are viewing some sort of chimp zoo battle.
Cowicide

How quaint… little league brains in a brawl.
http://twitter.com/MoFro13 Mostafa Alattar

Wearing a U(sic)GA t-shirt, no surprise there. Go Jackets!
http://dailygrail.com/ Red Pill Junkie

“Rip that other guy’s balls out
Rip that other guy’s baaalls…”

Wait, isn’t that how it goes?
http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

It’s only a game, folks. Only a game.
http://jimbeach.net mindfu

We humans just have this whole programming that’s based in symbols and archetypes, like say a son (representing hopes and dreams) getting a call that goes against them (representing the crushing of dreams by the whimsies of cruel authority).

But our job as humans is to control our freaking imaginative minds, and enjoy the games without treating the symbols as real. Here, utter fail. I wonder if therapy would help? Or, if not, at least the effect of the law and the embarrassment of jail time.
http://twitter.com/axoplasm Paul Souders

So I watched this video twice trying to figure out who “Gus” is, because everyone is yelling “Gus, Gus, cut it out!”

I figured it out eventually.
http://www.doggo.org doggo

Pffft! That ain’t no Little League fight. There they is on a baseball diamond, an’ not a one of ‘em availed themselfs of the handy persuaders called “baseball bats”. Not a single hardball pitched at another daddy’s forehead.
Diet Mr Pibb

EDIT: I see I’m not the first one to this.

I’m sorry, I thought this was America! I–I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I thought this was America!